NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Release time, date, and best tips for ordering one

NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card will go on sale on Feb. 25 for a suggested retail price of $ 329, and while it may be the lowest offering from the hardware manufacturer, it is likely still extremely high in demand and short of supply. With that in mind, we’ll reveal when the 3060 is expected to go on sale, offer a few links to retailers, and share our own tips for getting you an order on time. The crowds are about to start again, so here’s everything you need to know.

What time will the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 be released?

While all previous NVIDIA RTX GPUs were released around 9am EST as of release, NVIDIA has officially announced several plans for the 3060. In an email to press, NVIDIA said the RTX 3060 is expected to be available at retailers nationwide round February 25 at noon EST

That said, as we saw with Sony’s PS5 pre-order fiasco in September, it doesn’t hurt to have your tabs ready at 9am EST, in case some stores decide to release their stock a little earlier. While NVIDIA has likely enacted strict sales provisions with its partner stores, it never hurts to be too prepared for the GPU release day.

Links for pre-order

Now that you know exactly when the RTX 3060 is expected to go on sale, it’s time to find out where you’d like to buy one. NVIDIA does not sell Founder’s Edition of the 3060, so that means all versions of the card are offered through third-party manufacturers. In keeping with that idea, you may want to start your search at third-party stores before visiting NVIDIA’s own site.

This list of retailers isn’t exhaustive, but here are some of the best places to get your hands on a 3060 on launch day. We’ve cached the pages to search for the 3060, so hopefully they’ll populate correctly once the maps go live.

B&H, in particular, has avoided the last few graphics card releases on launch day, but we thought it might be helpful to include the store on our list as an outlet once all other options are completely exhausted.

Best tips for ordering an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

You have the official release time and a few links you could use to pre-order your 3060, so now we’ll give you some helpful tips on how to potentially get your card ahead of those pesky bots. Some of these tips might be obvious to veteran online shoppers, but here are a few retail tactics we learned after successfully securing a few hot tech items during the pandemic.

• Enter payment information in advance: With the exception of the NVIDIA Official Store, all retailers listed above allow customers to enter their payment information for an account at any time before making a purchase. With that in mind, you should add in advance any credit, debit card or Paypal that you want to use for your store of choice. When the buzz of orders starts to roll in, stores sell products to those who pay them the fastest. They will not wait for the person to still enter their card number at the checkout. If you don’t like the security implications of storing credit cards, you can always delete the data after the sale has taken place.
• Follow some solid resources: While it sometimes works to refresh product pages over and over, it also doesn’t hurt to set up alerts for some deal-focused Twitter accounts as well. We prefer accounts such as Wario64 and IGN offers who often provide links to retailers or moment-to-moment item availability updates. The minutes it takes for an email with stock alerts from a retailer to be sent isn’t fast enough for the 3060, so rely on Twitter for faster information.
• Apps are fast: Also related to speed, many shoppers find that buying popular items through smartphone apps is faster than through a desktop website. This is especially true if you’ve entered your payment information in advance. Some have also found that the RTX GPU product pages are also the first to appear on mobile devices. We’re still a supporter of desktop ourselves, but people with a good phone might want to consider this route.
• Use your best hardware: It goes without saying that since you’re about to deal with websites and apps that are severely overloaded, you should always compete with the best hardware possible. Even though you are only working from a browser, you still need to make sure that there are no hardware issues to slow you down. Especially in the GPU race, every second counts.
• Sneaky Best Buy: While most sites like Amazon and Newegg tend to sell out all of their GPU stock immediately, Best Buy tries to stagger the sale to make sure real people can secure their goods. This means that when it comes to selling times, Best Buy may not have tickets available until 12:30 PM EST or even 1:00 PM. Even after launch, the “add to cart” button can flicker on and off at an unpredictable interval. Take a good look at Best Buy, because you might be lucky if the 3060 is sold out elsewhere.

The NVIDIA GeForce 3060 goes on sale Feb. 25 for $ 329 MSRP.

Are you planning to order an RTX 3060 on Thursday? What are your best pre-order tips for securing hot items? Tell us in the comments!